


Heritage

by Miladygrey



Category: Alias (TV)
Genre: F/M, WowWrongBadHot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:03:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1660733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miladygrey/pseuds/Miladygrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Honesty is important right now, two naked spies in bed together, still breathing hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heritage

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2005 for Yahtzee63's WowWrongBadHot Ficathon. My request was for RST, with Weiss at least referred to and Sydney in no way involved.
> 
> Set anytime in S4, references to flashback events from the episode "The Orphan".

In bed with her…not-father. It’s the best description Nadia can come up with. It’s unvarnished, it’s honest. Honesty is important right now, two naked spies in bed together, still breathing hard. She should at least make an effort towards it.

Jack is not family. Jack is something else, something there is no word for but should be. She might have tried to see him as an uncle of sorts, or in a more distant light as her father’s business partner. But his natural reserve does not lend itself to familial associations. And whatever he is, has been, or may be to her father, it’s nothing so simple as a mere business partner.

Jack _sees_. In her patches of drug-hazed memory from the past spring, one image stands out clearly--Jack Bristow staring down at her, jaw clenched, dark eyes searching her face. Instinct had made her smile, a weak effort designed to calm and placate. It made Jack draw away as though hurt.

Later, she learned he was merely burned, not hurt. There is a difference.

She encourages that, the tiny interactions that spark and burn, even not consciously knowing why. When she smiles sidelong at Eric or Marshall, he watches until she turns the smile on him, so she’s learned not to smile directly at him. The sight of her absently playing with her hair while she works has caused him to pause as he crosses the APO floors. And when she asks him “What do you think, Jack?” at briefings, he stares into her eyes as though trying to read a hidden message. She has none to give him, her interest is simple and shallow. He is an older man, intelligent and in charge. She likes those men. She always has.

Which has led to this. A room somewhere in Oregon, nothing memorable about it at all. The assignment was to monitor a particularly sensitive suspect, tap his phone and tape his conversations, then interpret and decode the cryptic murmurs, fitting them into the jigsaw of yet another intricate plot that (according to her father) threatens the currently defined Free World. Hours, days, tucked into a faux-rustic resort surrounded by trees and the subliminals of rain. Days of sharing a space, leaning in over tiny speakers to listen to words that have no meaning (the Yoruba is a code, nonsense phrases), but that slide and whisper, managing to be suggestive even when they know they‘re not. Until she, mouthing a phrase, looked up from her papers to see Jack staring at her lips. It was Roberto’s look, desire unbidden and unasked for, and it was the easiest thing in the world to stand up, walk the three steps to his chair, and give him what he (and she) wanted.

It burned, kissing him. Jack looks cold, silver hair and grey suits and flat, calm voice, but his hands and mouth are fiercely warm. He kissed as though he would drink her dry and leave her empty, as though she were the whiskey he so rarely indulges in. Nadia’s thoughts are a blur from that moment on, only random sensory impressions remain. The heat of their bodies in contrast to the rain-scented chill of the room, wide rough hands sliding over her skin and drawing up every nerve in anticipation, the taste of his mouth, black coffee and something thick, unique. Roberto had tasted like tequila and spice--

But Jack is nothing like Roberto, nothing at all. A moment or a motion, now and again, that chimes similarity in her memory. Both tall, both so very serious when the situation demands it. Though Jack is serious all the time. Roberto had known how to smile. Sitting in her jail cell, concentrating so hard on _not_ looking at him, _not_ reacting to his words, Nadia had still been able to hear it in his voice when he smiled. Jack’s voice reveals nothing unless he wants it to. It gives nothing away now. “What about Weiss?”

“I don’t know.” Weiss is…Weiss, could be no one else, from that very first smiling, honest introduction. He’s the personification of normal, the proof that Nadia Santos can (might) have a regular life with a regular boyfriend. Only not now. “He’ll be hurt…”

“Does that bother you?”

There is something deeply and inherently wrong in having this conversation while in bed with Jack, the scent of him still fresh on her body and making it hard to think. Discussing it across the conference table in the clean white light of APO would make more sense. Anything else would. “I’m fond of Eric. He’s a good man, a kind man. But--” She struggles for the words. Nothing in English, Spanish, or any of the other dozen languages that trip off her tongue can paint the situation as anything less than what it is; she will hurt someone who has never hurt her.

“--it’s not enough.” Jack finishes her sentence in a voice colored with world-weariness. “You could play the part well. But knowing all the while that you are capable of so much more…he would notice. Knowing Weiss, he would get himself killed trying to live up to what he perceives to be your standards for a lover.”

She curls up in a ball, wrapping herself in sheets and trying not to listen, but Jack’s body is a warm presence leaning over her, his voice an insistent whisper in her ear. “And you’d grieve for a while. You might even mean it. And then you’d wake up and realize that you were free to be yourself again with no limits, well-meaning or otherwise, and you’d put away the tears--”

“ _Basta!_ I’m not like--I’m not!” A burst of anger translates into motion; she lashes out with both hands, makes contact and feels him roll away. She follows, pinning him in a gesture learned from Roberto in a gymnasium, practiced on Cesar in that sunlit courtyard, perfected here in an anonymous bed. The battlefields grow smaller, the weapons--physical, mental--remain the same. “I know who you see when you look at me. You always have, even here, after everything. But I’m not her! As if betrayal were something in the genes, passed down and inevitable--”

“If it is--” His big hands cup her face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, far too familiar with the ghosts under her skin. “--then you have it from both parents. A birthright along with your hair and eyes.”

“I deny it. I renounce it.” She wants to lean into his hands, but knows better. What passed between them an hour ago was caught out of time, a grace in shadows. Surely it’s gone now, shattered by these clinical words. And Jack has killed people in more intimate situations than this. “My parents had no use for me most of my life. I don‘t want whatever they might have left me.”

“Such a legacy can’t be so easily given away. I don’t want it any more than you do, Nadia. I simply seem to be drawn to it.”

“You want me _because_ I’m like her?”

It’s very easy to sound betrayed and hurt. But she’s known this from the beginning. Easy enough to see, and something she’d been trained to spot. Weakness. Even the great Jack Bristow has weaknesses. She just never thought she’d be exploiting them. Or that he’d be exploiting hers.

This is not how it was supposed to be. If this was ever supposed to be. She knows she’s repeating herself, but there’s nothing else she can say. “I’m not my mother. I refuse to be.”

He draws his hand down her bare back, letting the shiver and arch of her body under his touch speak its own answer. “You share some of her weaknesses.”

“I don’t think of you as a weakness, Jack.”

His mouth is on her nape. “You should.”


End file.
